During his two-year crime spree, the man from Lancaster County, Pa., claimed over 600 victims. Most were female, many lived in Los Angeles and worked in the entertainment industry. A few — like “Hunger Games” actress Jennifer Lawrence — were A-list celebrities. They had no reason to know the man, 36-year-old Ryan Collins, as he schemed from his home outside Harrisburg.

But he infiltrated and stole the most intimate parts of their digital lives.

Collins was responsible for illegally collecting their nude photos, as federal investigators found during a search for the responsible parties behind the photo leak that caused havoc across the Internet in August and early September 2014. U.S. Middle District of Pennsylvania Judge William W. Caldwell sentenced Collins to 18 months in federal prison on Wednesday, negotiated from a possible five year maximum as part of a plea deal.

It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime

In what would become known as Celebgate or the Fappening, after a crude term for masturbation, illegally obtained photographs surfaced on Reddit and 4chan, the Internet message board that is a spawning ground for harmless memes and also is a pernicious troll hive. FBI agents could not find evidence that Collins himself uploaded the images online, however, or otherwise shared them.

What he did admit to was the hack. For nearly two years, between November 2012 and September 2014, Collins stole images by the hundreds. Though the investigators did not mention victims by name, a few of the photographs released in the hack were of women under the age of 18, like Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney. Collins pleaded guilty in March 2016 to felony computer hacking charges.

A few of the victims spoke out, arguing the crime was worse than a hack normally connotes. “It is not a scandal. It is a sex crime,” Jennifer Lawrence told Vanity Fair in October 2014. “It is a sexual violation.”

The Justice Department described Collins’s “sophisticated phishing scheme” on Thursday. “He sent e-mails to victims that appeared to be from Apple or Google and asked victims to provide their usernames and passwords,” according to a statement from the department. As The Washington Post reported in March, the messages came from “e-mailprotection138@icloud.com,” “secure.helpdesk0019@gmail.com” and other phony email addresses designed to appear legitimate.

If the victims replied — and several did; in the end Collins had illegal access to more than a hundred iCloud and Gmail accounts — he hunted for their nude photographs and videos. Occasionally, the Justice Department noted, Collins ran a software program to download entire Apple iCloud backups. He also operated a scam modelling agency to obtain nude photos, the department said.

Immediately after sentencing, the Justice Department said Collins was taken into custody.

It marked the latest in a series of high-profile cases against hackers, including a 52-month prison term for Marcel Lehel Lazar, or Guccifer, who was sentenced in September. The Romanian hacker was behind the revelation that, as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton used a private email address. U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris, the judge in Lazar’s case, called cyberattacks on Americans an “epidemic [that] must stop,” The Post reported.

WASHINGTON _ A federal government contractor has been accused of removing highly classified information and storing the material in his house and car, federal prosecutors announced Wednesday.

The Justice Department announced a criminal complaint against Harold Thomas Martin III of Glen Burnie, Maryland.

The Justice Department’s top national security official, John Carlin, said in Boston that the arrest pointed to the threat posed by insiders. Among the classified documents found with Martin, the government says, were six that contain sensitive intelligence — meaning they were produced through sensitive government sources or methods that are critical to national security issues — and date back to 2014.

Related

All the documents were clearly marked as classified information, according to the criminal complaint. Investigators also found stolen property valued at more than US$1,000 at Martin’s residence or vehicle. He voluntarily agreed to an interview.

“Martin at first denied, and later when confronted with specific documents, admitted he took documents and digital files from his work assignment to his residence and vehicle that he knew were classified,” according to the complaint, despite not having the authorization to do so.

Martin has been in custody since a court appearance in August. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney, and a message left at a home telephone number listed for Martin was not immediately returned on Wednesday.

In 2013, Edward Snowden, also a contractor for the NSA at the time, took a large quantity of documents that were later given to reporters, which laid bare a number of NSA surveillance operations.

According to The New York Times, Martin is suspected of taking the highly classified “source code” developed by the agency to break into computer systems of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Like Snowden, Martin worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, which builds and operates many of the NSA’s most sensitive cyber-operations, the Times reported.

TULSA, Okla. — An unarmed black man killed by a white Oklahoma officer who was responding to a stalled vehicle can be seen in police video walking away from officers and toward his SUV with his hands up before he approaches the driver’s side door, where he drops to the ground after being shocked with a stun gun then fatally shot.

In Tulsa police helicopter footage that was among several clips released Monday showing the shooting of 40-year-old Terence Crutcher and its aftermath, a man in the helicopter that arrives above the scene as Crutcher walks to the vehicle can be heard saying “time for a Taser.” He then says: “That looks like a bad dude, too. Probably on something.”

Tulsa PoliceOfficer Betty Shelby

Police Chief Chuck Jordan announced before the video and audio recordings’ release that Crutcher had no weapon on him or in his SUV when he was shot Friday. It’s not clear from the footage what led Betty Shelby, the officer who fired the fatal shot, to draw her gun or what orders officers might have given Crutcher. Local and federal investigations are underway to determine whether criminal charges are warranted in the shooting or if Crutcher’s civil rights were violated.

Crutcher’s twin sister, Tiffany Crutcher, called for charges Monday.

“The big bad dude was my twin brother. That big bad dude was a father,” she said. “That big bad dude was a son. That big bad dude was enrolled at Tulsa Community College, just wanting to make us proud. That big bad dude loved God. That big bad dude was at church singing with all of his flaws, every week. That big bad dude, that’s who he was.”

Police video shows Crutcher walking toward his SUV, which is stopped in the middle of the road. His hands are up and a female officer is following him. As Crutcher approaches the driver’s side of the SUV, three male officers walk up and Crutcher appears to lower his hands and place them on the vehicle. The officers surround him, making it harder to see his actions from the dashboard camera’s angle.

Crutcher can be seen dropping to the ground. Someone on the police radio says, “I think he may have just been tasered.” One of the officers near Crutcher backs up slightly.

Then almost immediately, someone can be heard yelling, “Shots fired!” Crutcher’s head then drops, leaving him completely lying out in the street.

After that, someone on the police radio can be heard saying, “Shots fired. We have one suspect down.”

Tulsa Police Department In this image made from a Friday, Sept. 16, 2016 police video, Terence Crutcher, left, is pursued by police officers as he walks to an SUV in Tulsa, Okla.

Tulsa Police DepartmentTerence Crutcher, center, is followed by police.

Tulsa Police Department In this image made from a Friday, Sept. 16, 2016 police video, Terence Crutcher, top, is pursued by police officers as he walk to an SUV in Tulsa, Okla.

The shooting comes just four months after former Tulsa County volunteer deputy Robert Bates was sentenced to four years in prison on a second-degree manslaughter conviction in the 2015 death of an unarmed black man.

Shelby worked as a Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy for four years before joining the Tulsa Police Department in December 2011, officials said. She has been placed on paid leave.

The initial moments of Crutcher’s encounter with police are not shown in the footage. Shelby did not activate her patrol car’s dashcam, said police spokeswoman Jeanne MacKenzie, and the ground-level video released Monday came from the car of a second officer who arrived at the scene.

Initial police briefings indicated Crutcher was not obeying officers’ commands, but MacKenzie said Monday she didn’t know what Crutcher was doing that prompted police to shoot. Two 911 calls described an SUV that had been abandoned in the middle of the road. One unidentified caller said the driver was acting strangely, adding, “I think he’s smoking something.”

After the shooting, Crutcher could be seen lying on the side of the road, blood pooling around his body, for nearly two minutes before anyone checked on him. When asked why police did not provide immediate assistance once Crutcher was down, MacKenzie said, “I don’t know that we have protocol on how to render aid to people.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma, which also called for charges, said Crutcher was left to bleed while officers stood by. The group’s executive director, Ryan Kiesel, said Crutcher’s death shows “how little regard” Tulsa police have for the community’s minorities.

With relations between police and blacks in Tulsa already uneasy, the community needs to be the place where change happens, Tiffany Crutcher said.

“This is bigger than us right here. We’re going to stop it right here,” she said.

Mike Simmons/Tulsa World Protesters pray over Tyler Johnson, son of Terence Crutcher, in front of the Tulsa County Courthouse Monday, Sept. 19, 2016, in Tulsa, Okla., during a protest of the Tulsa Police shooting of Terence Crutcher. (

U.S. Attorney Danny Williams said the Department of Justice’s civil rights investigation into the shooting will be separate from a local one into whether criminal charges should be filed.

“The Justice Department is committed to investigating allegations of force by law enforcement officers and will devote whatever resources are necessary to ensure that all allegations of serious civil rights violations are fully and completely investigated,” he said.

Speaking Monday in Tulsa, civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump said Crutcher committed no crime and gave officers no reason to shoot him.

“When unarmed people of colour break down on the side of the road, we’re not treated as citizens needing help. We’re treated as, I guess, criminals — suspects that they fear,” said Crump, who is representing Crutcher’s family just as he did relatives of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed, black Florida teenager who was fatally shot by a neighbourhood watch volunteer in 2012.

He said Tulsa police drew their own conclusions about Crutcher.

“So I guess it’s a crime now to be a big black man,” Crump said. “My God, help us.”

As incredible as it may seem – since so much of the automotive world has changed in the 12 short months since last September 18th – Sunday is the first anniversary of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal. Since that fateful Friday, we’ve been exposed to a level of subterfuge and deception – yes, even compared with GM’s ignition key fiasco – the automotive world had not seen since Ford’s exploding Pintos.

And, to remind us of just how truly mendacious the Dieselgate conspiracy has been, just a week before this first anniversary, the U.S. Justice Department announced a plea bargain with James Robert Liang (who, according to the indictment, is Volkswagen America’s “Leader of Diesel Compliance”) on a count ofConspiracy to Defraud the United States, to Commit Wire Fraud, and to Violate the Clean Air Act. The key word in that charge would be “conspiracy,” which would seem to mean, as The New York Times states, “that the Justice Department is trying to build a larger criminal case and pursue charges against other higher-level executives at the carmaker.” Liang’s indictment may be just the first in a long line of criminal charges and, in reaching a plea deal with the Justice Department, the senior VW engineer is almost assuredly “rolling over” on Volkswagen’s senior brass.

While many reports reiterate the possibility of a five-year jail term, Mr. Liang may well receive the minimum sentence of three years of supervised probation as a result of his cooperation. Almost assuredly, however:

]]>http://driving.ca/volkswagen/auto-news/news/motor-mouth-the-volkswagen-conspiracy-deepens/feed0stdJames Robert LiangU.S. Justice Department to phase out use of ‘less safe and less effective’ private prisonshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-justice-department-to-phase-out-use-of-less-safe-and-less-effective-private-prisons
Thu, 18 Aug 2016 19:04:31 +0000https://nationalpostcom.wordpress.com?p=1185586&preview_id=1185586

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department plans to end its use of private prisons after officials concluded the facilities are both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government.

Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced the decision on Thursday in a memo that instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when they expire or “substantially reduce” the contracts’ scope. The goal, Yates wrote, is “reducing – and ultimately ending – our use of privately operated prisons.”

“They simply do not provide the same level of correctional services, programs, and resources; they do not save substantially on costs; and as noted in a recent report by the Department’s Office of Inspector General, they do not maintain the same level of safety and security,” Yates wrote.

The Justice Department’s Inspector General last week released a critical report concluding that privately operated facilities incurred more safety and security incidents than those run by the federal Bureau of Prisons. The private facilities, for example, had higher rates of assaults — both by inmates on other inmates and by inmates on staff — and saw eight times as many contraband cellphones confiscated each year on average, according to the report.

The fact of the matter is that private prisons don’t compare favorably to Bureau of Prisons facilities in terms of safety or security or services

Disturbances in the facilities, the report said, led in recent years to “extensive property damage, bodily injury, and the death of a Correctional Officer.” The report listed several examples of mayhem at private facilities, including a May 2012 riot at the Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi in which 20 people were injured and a correctional officer killed. That incident, according to the report, involved 250 inmates who were upset about low-quality food and medical care.

“The fact of the matter is that private prisons don’t compare favorably to Bureau of Prisons facilities in terms of safety or security or services, and now with the decline in the federal prison population, we have both the opportunity and the responsibility to do something about that,” Yates said in an interview.

The problems at private facilities were hardly a secret, and Yates said Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons officials had been talking for months about discontinuing their use. Mother Jones recently published a 35,000-word exposé detailing a reporter’s undercover work as a private prison guard in Louisiana — a piece that found serious deficiencies. The Nation magazine wrote earlier this year about deaths under questionable circumstances in privately operated facilities.

The 13 privately run facilities will not close overnight. Yates said the Justice Department would not terminate existing contracts but instead review those that come up for renewal. She said all the contracts would come up for renewal over the next five years.

Any casual reader would come to the conclusion that contract prisons are not as safe as BOP prisons… The conclusion is wrong

It is possible the directive could face resistance from those companies that will be affected. In response to the inspector general report, the contractors running the prisons noted their inmate populations consist largely of non-citizens and that presents them with challenges that government-run facilities do not have.

Scott Marquardt, the president of Management and Training Corporation, wrote that comparing Bureau of Prisons facilities to privately operated ones was “comparing apples and oranges” and generally disputed the inspector general’s report.

“Any casual reader would come to the conclusion that contract prisons are not as safe as BOP prisons,” Marquardt wrote. “The conclusion is wrong and is not supported by the work done by the [Office of the Inspector General].”

Private prisons ‘served an important role during a difficult time period,’ but they had proven less effective than facilities run by the government

Yates, though, noted the Bureau of Prisons was “already taking steps” to make her order a reality. Three weeks ago, she wrote, the bureau declined to renew a contract for 1,200 beds at the Cibola County Correctional Center in New Mexico. According to a local TV station, the county sheriff said the facility’s closure would have a negative impact on the community.

Yates wrote that the bureau also would amend a solicitation for a 10,800-bed contract to one for a maximum 3,600-bed contract. That, Yates wrote, would allow the Bureau of Prisons over the next year to discontinue housing inmates in at least three private prisons, and by May 1, 2017, the total private prison population would stand at less than 14,200 inmates. She said it was “hard to know precisely” when all the privately run facilities would no longer have federal inmates, though she noted 14,200 was less than half the inmates they held at their apex three years ago, a figure she said indicated the department was “well on our way to ultimately eliminating the use of private prisons entirely.”

“We have to be realistic about the time it will take, but that really depends on the continuing decline of the federal prison population, and that’s really hard to accurately predict,” Yates said.

According to the Inspector General’s report, private prisons housed roughly 22,660 federal inmates as of December 2015. That represents about 12 percent of the Bureau of Prisons total inmate population, according to the report.

In her memo, Yates wrote that the Bureau of Prisons began contracting with privately run institutions about a decade ago in the wake of exploding prison populations, and by 2013, as the federal prison population reached its peak, nearly 30,000 inmates were housed in privately operated facilities. But in 2013, Yates wrote, the prison population began to decline because of efforts to adjust sentencing guidelines, sometimes retroactively, and to change the way low-level drug offenders are charged. She said the drop in federal inmates gave officials the opportunity to re-evaluate the use of private prisons.

Yates wrote that private prisons “served an important role during a difficult time period,” but they had proven less effective than facilities run by the government. The contract prisons are operated by three private corporations, according to the Inspector General’s report: Corrections Corporation of America, GEO Group and Management and Training Corporation. The bureau of prisons spent $639 million on private prisons in fiscal year 2014, according to the report.

Yates said it was “really hard to determine whether private prisons are less expensive” and whether their closure would cause costs to go up, though she said officials did not anticipate having to hire additional Bureau of Prisons staff.

BALTIMORE — Prosecutors dropped the remaining charges Wednesday against three Baltimore police officers awaiting trial in the death of Freddie Gray, bringing an end to the case without a conviction.

Gray was a 25-year-old black man whose neck was broken while he was handcuffed and shackled but left unrestrained in the back of a police van in April 2015. His death added fuel to the growing Black Lives Matter movement, set off massive protests in the city and led to the worst riots the city had seen in decades.

The decision by prosecutors comes after a judge had already acquitted three of the six officers charged in the case, including the van driver who the state considered the most responsible and another officer who was the highest-ranking of the group.

A fourth officer had his case heard by a jury, but the panel deadlocked and the judge declared a mistrial.

On Wednesday, instead of a pretrial hearing for Officer Garrett Miller — who had faced assault, misconduct in office and reckless endangerment charges — Chief Deputy State’s Attorney Michael Schatzow told the judge that prosecutors were dropping the charges against Miller and the rest of the officers.

Prosecutors and defence attorneys quickly left the courtroom without commenting, but both sides planned news conferences later Wednesday.

After Gray’s death, the U.S. Justice Department launched a patterns and practice investigation into allegations of widespread abuse and unlawful arrests by the Baltimore Police Department. The results have not been released.

Prosecutors had said Gray was illegally arrested after he ran away from a bike patrol officer and the officers failed to buckle Gray into a seat belt or call a medic when he indicated he wanted to go to a hospital.

NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty ImagesThis file photo taken on May 22, 2016 shows a sign reading "We Must Stop Killing Each Other" seen in the boarded up window of an abandoned building in the neighborhood where Freddie Gray was arrested last year in Baltimore, Maryland. Baltimore prosecutors dropped all remaining charges against police July 27, 2016 in the death of Freddie Gray, an African American man whose fatal injury in police custody last year led to riots in the city.The action, taken by the Baltimore state's attorney in a pretrial hearing, comes after the acquittal of three of six Baltimore police officers charged in the case.

State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby wasted little time in announcing charges after Gray’s death — one day after receiving the police department’s investigation while a tense city was still under curfew — and she did not shy from the spotlight. She posed for magazine photos, sat for TV interviews and even appeared onstage at a Prince concert in Gray’s honour.

The city’s troubles forced Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to fire her reform-minded police chief and abandon her re-election campaign. Homicides skyrocketed at a rate unseen in decades.

Many feared that the acquittals could prompt more protests and unrest, but that never panned out.

The Gray case hasn’t fit quite so neatly into the narrative of white authorities imposing unfair justice on minorities.

Three of the officers charged are white and three are black. The victim, judge, top prosecutor and mayor are African-American. At the time of Gray’s death, so was the police chief.

No reputations hinged on the case’s outcome as much as Mosby and her husband, Nick Mosby, a councilman for Baltimore’s west side who announced his mayoral candidacy shortly after Rawlings-Blake pulled out.

Marilyn Mosby spoke so forcefully when she announced the charges against the officers in May that defence attorneys argued she should recuse herself for bias.

BATON ROUGE — The mood was emotional, and at times angry, as evening unfolded in the working class, predominantly black Louisiana neighborhood where the police killing of a black man was caught on videotape.

Hundreds of mourners, friends and family members of Alton Sterling, 37, gathered Wednesday in Baton Rouge for a second night of protest, prayer and remembrance.

Sterling was shot early Tuesday as he wrestled with two white police officers outside the convenience store where he sold music and movies on compact discs. Police say he was armed.

Cellphone video of the shooting posted online by a community activist set off angry protests, coming at a time when law enforcement officers across the country are under close scrutiny over what some see as indiscriminate use of deadly force against blacks.

Gerald Herbert / Associated PressCameron Sterling, son of Alton Sterling, is comforted by hands from the crowd at a vigil outside the Triple S convenience store in Baton Rouge on July 6.

In the latest death, a Minnesota officer shot a black man in a car with a woman and a child about 9 p.m. Wednesday, and authorities are looking into whether the aftermath of the killing was livestreamed in a widely shared Facebook video.

Moving quickly to keep tensions from boiling over in Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards asked the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday to lead a civil rights investigation into the killing.

“I have very serious concerns. The video is disturbing, to say the least,” the governor said at a news conference.

Sandra Augustus, an aunt who helped raise Sterling after his mother died, spoke to the crowds Wednesday night with a tearful, broken voice.

She said a second video that emerged showing the moments before her nephew was shot left her angry.

“I’m angry, but I’m not angry enough to hurt nobody,” Augustus said. “I’m not angry enough to go into the street. I’m not angry enough to curse the police out. But I’m angry and I’m mad because they took something from me that I never ever will get back.”

Terrance Carter, Sterling’s 28-year-old nephew, wore a T-shirt with his uncle’s image printed on it. The police, he charged, went way too far.

“They did it wrong,” he said. “They could have handled it better than they did. They didn’t have to shoot him!”

A law enforcement official said a gun was taken from Sterling after he was killed early Tuesday. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

It was not clear from the murky cellphone footage whether Sterling had the gun in his hand or was reaching for it when he was shot. A witness said he saw police pull a gun from Sterling’s pocket after the shooting.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. said Sterling was armed – Dabadie didn’t specify the type of weapon – but that there are still questions about what happened.

“Like you, there is a lot that we do not understand. And at this point, like you, I am demanding answers,” Dabadie said, calling the shooting a “horrible tragedy.”

Sterling was confronted by police after an anonymous caller reported being threatened by someone with gun outside the store, authorities said.

In cellphone video, one of the officers tackled Sterling, and the two officers pinned him to the pavement.

Someone yelled, “He’s got a gun! Gun!” and one officer pulled his weapon from his holster. After some shouting, what sounded like a gunshot could be heard. The camera pulled away before more shots were heard.

The officers, identified by the chief as Blane Salamoni, a four-year member of the department, and Howie Lake II, who has been on the force for three years, were placed on administrative leave, standard department procedure.

Lake was involved in another police shooting in December 2014. He told detectives investigating that shooting that he fired six or seven times when a suspect refused to drop his gun, threatened to kill himself and pointed his revolver at officers. The man was wounded by police.

In the shooting Tuesday, authorities would not say whether one or both officers fired their weapons or how many times.

The store owner, Abdullah Muflahi, released a video that he said he shot from a slightly different angle. He said Sterling was not holding a gun during the shooting but that he saw officers remove one from his pocket afterward. His video shows an officer reaching into Sterling’s pocket to grab an object.

Gerald Herbert / Associated PressPeople follow a brass band through the street after a vigil for Alton Sterling.

Muflahi said an officer fired four to six shots into Sterling’s chest.

The street protest continued into the night Wednesday. People danced on cars and trucks, blocked traffic, and demanded justice. The protests were peaceful, and there was no sign of police even as the protests blocked a thoroughfare through that section of Baton Rouge.

Kristen George, a 25-year-old restaurant manager, came to the protest with her 2-year-old son Amazen and her wife and her 9-year-old son. George said she wanted to show her children the meaning of a civil rights protest.

“It’s hard out here for a black man in 2016,” she said. “I don’t want them to feel scared to stand up for their rights.”

Nefertiti Queen, a 34-year-old activist, predicted the protests in Baton Rouge would continue and remain peaceful as long as the authorities take the right steps in the investigation.

“It’s peaceful right now, but if the people don’t get what they want, it might get like Ferguson,” she said. She said she spent some time protesting in Ferguson, Missouri, after the controversial police shooting of Michael Brown, a black man who was unarmed. “People will get frustrated if they don’t get answers.”

Baton Rouge, a city of about 229,000, is 54 percent black, according to census data, and more than 25 percent of its people live in poverty.

RALEIGH, N.C. — A potentially epic clash over transgender rights took shape Monday when the U.S. Justice Department sued North Carolina over the state’s new bathroom law.

In unusually forceful language, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said North Carolina’s law requiring transgender people to use the public restroom corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate amounts to “state-sponsored discrimination” and is aimed at “a problem that doesn’t exist.”

She said it serves only to “harm innocent Americans.”

Billions of dollars in state aid for North Carolina — and a potentially landmark decision regarding the reach of the nation’s civil rights laws — are at stake in the dispute, which in recent weeks has triggered boycotts and cancellations aimed at getting the state to repeal the measure that took effect in March.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department said the law amounts to illegal sex discrimination against transgender people and gave Gov. Pat McCrory until Monday to say he would refuse to enforce it.

McCrory instead doubled down by filing a federal lawsuit Monday arguing that the North Carolina law is a “commonsense privacy policy” and that the Justice Department’s position is “baseless and blatant overreach.”

“This is not a North Carolina issue. It is now a national issue,” said McCrory, a Republican who is up for re-election in November, declared at a news conference.

The governor accused the Obama administration of unilaterally rewriting federal civil rights law to protect transgender people’s access to bathrooms, locker rooms and showers across the country.

Later in the day, the Justice Department responded by suing North Carolina, seeking a court order declaring the law discriminatory and unenforceable.

Lynch spoke directly to residents of her native state, saying they have been falsely told by North Carolina proponents that the law protects vulnerable people from harm in bathrooms.

“Instead, what this law does, is inflict further indignity on a population that has already suffered far more than its fair share,” she said. “This law provides no benefit to society, and all it does it is harm innocent Americans.”

Defenders of the law have argued that it necessary to protect the safety and privacy of people in bathrooms. Opponents have argued that the danger of a transgender person molesting a child in a restroom is all but nonexistent.

Stars such as Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam have cancelled shows in North Carolina over the new law. PayPal abandoned a planned 400-employee operation centre in Charlotte, and Deutsche Bank froze expansion plans near Raleigh.

Nearly 200 corporate leaders from across the country, including Charlotte-based Bank of America, have urged the law’s repeal, arguing it is bad for business because it makes recruiting talented employees more difficult.

Several other states have proposed similar laws in recent months limiting protections for gay, bisexual and transgender people. On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi sued that state over a law that will allow workers to cite their religious objections to gay marriage to deny services to people.

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat running against McCrory for governor, has refused to defend the law, which was passed in reaction to a Charlotte ordinance allowing transgender people to use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.

Lynch likened her agency’s involvement in the North Carolina law to the shifting expansion of civil rights that scrapped legal racial segregation and prohibitions against gay marriage.

“This is about the dignity and the respect that we accord our fellow citizens,” Lynch said. “It’s about the founding ideals that have led this country, haltingly but inexorably in the direction of fairness, inclusion and equality for all Americans.”

The new North Carolina law also excludes lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from state anti-discrimination protection and bars local governments from adopting their own anti-bias measures.

The Justice Department noted a ruling last month by a federal appeals court that a transgender Virginia high school student has a right to use bathrooms that correspond with his new identity. The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is binding on five states, including North Carolina. Virginia is seeking a re-hearing by the entire appeals court.

The U.S. Education Department and other federal agencies could try to cut off money to North Carolina to force compliance.

The state university system risks losing more than $1.4 billion in federal funds. An additional $800 million in federally backed loans for students who attend the public universities could also be at risk.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-sues-north-carolina-over-transgender-bathroom-law-aimed-at-a-problem-that-doesnt-exist/feed2stdLoretta Lynch Makes Statement On North Carolina LawsuitObama has granted the fewest pardons of any full-term president since John Adamshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/obama-has-granted-the-fewest-pardons-of-any-full-term-president-since-john-adams
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/obama-has-granted-the-fewest-pardons-of-any-full-term-president-since-john-adams#respondMon, 28 Mar 2016 14:55:09 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=1057227

When the Obama administration’s new acting pardon attorney, Bob Zauzmer, arrived on the job last month, he ran headlong into a backlog of more than 9,000 clemency petitions awaiting a decision on whether they deserve the president’s consideration. Many of those petitions were the byproduct of the announcement of Clemency Project 2014, which was established by the Justice Department – to great fanfare – to process additional applications from federal prisoners seeking reductions of unjustifiably long drug sentences.

Zauzmer has his work cut out for him – it has been widely reported that his predecessor, Deborah Leff, stepped down in January over frustrations with a lack of resources.

Wikimedia CommonsJohn Adams was president from 1797 to 1801

Was the administration ever serious about Clemency 2014? The rules for commutation requests even reaching the overburdened pardons office under the initiative are inexcusably discouraging. The worst is that inmates must have served at least 10 years of their sentence. Other rules state they must not have “a significant criminal history” (whatever that means); they must be nonviolent, low-level offenders; and they must be serving a sentence harsher than they would have gotten if convicted of the same offense today. Those who fall “outside of this initiative,” according to the Justice Department, can still seek clemency under the old rules if their applications are “especially meritorious.”

The results of this great, unprecedented effort? Obama has a clemency record comparable to the least merciful presidents in history. He has granted just 70 pardons, the lowest mark for any full-term president since John Adams, and 187 commutations of sentence. Meanwhile, 1,629 pardon petitions have been denied (more than five of the previous six presidents), as well as 8,123 requests for commutations (a new record). An additional 3,444 requests have been “closed without presidential action.”

Obama’s record is all the more deplorable because of assurances that he has made and that have been made on his behalf. On April 21, 2014, then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. encouraged federal prisoners to seek relief, noting that, despite sentencing reforms Obama signed into law in 2010, there were “still too many people . . . sentenced under the old regime” who needed attention. Holder said the White House had “indicated” that it wanted to “consider additional clemency applications to restore a degree of justice, fairness, and proportionality for deserving individuals who do not pose a threat to public safety.” In addition, the Justice Department was “committed to recommending as many qualified applicants as possible for reduced sentences.” Clemency Project 2014 has, however, become a bureaucratic disaster, assigned to volunteer lawyers and law students with little if any experience in the pitfalls of dealing with the federal criminal justice system.

In June 2014, the Hill reported that Obama was pushing forward with a review of the clemency system. In March 2015, the president told the Huffington Post that the pardon process had been “revamped” and that he would be exercising the pardon power “more aggressively.” Seven months later, he told the Marshall Project that clemency applications were being processed “more effectively” and a “steady ramp up” was in play. The Post recently reported that some additional grants are expected in the coming weeks, but “big” is hardly a word that appropriately describes what has gone on to date.

By now, Obama could have simply signed an amnesty proclamation covering everyone qualifying for lesser sentences. He could have taken the pardon process out of the Justice Department and given the job to a commission or an independent agency that would give him a degree of political cover if anything went wrong. Just such a move had been proposed by his first White House counsel, Gregory Craig.

Regardless, seven neglectful years allow for few pretty endings. If current patterns persist, Obama will go down as one of the most merciless presidents in history. On the other hand, even a moderate display of concern about clemency, with a few grants here and there, will almost certainly be viewed (and dubbed) as “a last-minute gesture,” granted to avoid any serious political accountability.

Any such grants will also be greeted with suspicion and exceptional scrutiny by the media and political opponents. Impressions left by any scandalous reports will be much deeper than if the president had simply been more merciful more evenly across the term, and not left everyone to wonder: “Why are these particular people being pardoned? And why are they being pardoned now? Why are they any more special than the thousands of applicants deemed unworthy before them?”

Having waited almost two years before granting his first presidential pardon, Obama would probably do as much harm to the general reputation of the pardon power as to his personal legacy with a controversial, Bill Clintonesque splurge in clemency just before leaving office. Sadly, many deserving recipients would be besmirched as well. This is the bed the president has made for himself.

George Lardner Jr., a former Post reporter, is scholar in residence at American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop. P.S. Ruckman Jr. is a professor of political science and editor of the Pardon Power Blog.

NEW YORK – It was early afternoon when Hawa Bah summoned the ambulance. She had arrived the previous day from Guinea on her annual visit to see her son, Mohamed Bah, the favorite of her four children. She found him upset and depressed, but he refused to go to the hospital. So she called 911.

Instead of paramedics, however, police in tactical gear swarmed the red-brick Harlem building where Mohamed Bah lived in apartment 5D. Once inside, they opened fire. When Mohamed was finally loaded into an ambulance that day in September 2012, he was dying from eight gunshot wounds, including one to the head.

The three officers involved in the shooting were quickly cleared by a Manhattan grand jury. But Hawa Bah is now is urging authorities to reopen the investigation, joining a flood of families who view this year’s debate over police use of deadly force as an opportunity to demand justice for past shootings.

Buoyed in part by the Black Lives Matter movement, discouraged families that had put down their protest signs are picking them up again, while others are clamoring for vindication from the Justice Department, civil rights lawyers and police reform advocates say.

It’s clear to us from the inconsistencies in the deposition testimony of these officers that they didn’t have enough time to get their story straight

“We now know that when authorities want to be transparent and efficient with information, they can,” said Daryl D. Parks, a civil rights lawyer who represents relatives of Michael Brown, who was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and Corey Jones, who was killed by police in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. “Most of the families now feel a little bit better, in that justice seems to be a little bit better had.”

Recently, Hawa Bah and her relatives gathered outside the Justice Department’s New York office, where they were joined by the families of other victims of police violence, including Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who died last year after a New York police officer allegedly used an illegal chokehold while arresting him on Staten Island.

“My son’s case has gotten a lot of attention, but other cases, like Mohamed’s, have not,” Carr said. “All the mothers need to stand together to make sure our children get justice.”

(Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)Ibrahim Bah, a cousin of Mohamed Bah, who was shot by police in his Harlem apartment, puts on a memorial T-shirt at a protest march near City Hall in New York, Oct. 7, 2012.

A Justice Department official could not confirm the trend, saying the agency lacks “the capacity to statistically analyze” complaints about civil rights violations. Parks and others noted that there’s a high bar for persuading the Justice Department to pursue civil rights charges.

But Bah is hopeful: New information has raised serious questions about the police account of her son’s shooting.

For example, police have long said that they opened fire after Mohamed Bah stabbed officer Edwin Mateo with a 13-inch kitchen knife. But in a recent sworn deposition, Mateo testified that he could not remember being stabbed. Instead, he said, he cried out because he had been shocked by a fellow officer’s stun gun.

Other documents revealed that the knife was never tested for fingerprints and probably never will be: The knife was “contaminated,” police said, when an evidence warehouse was flooded during Hurricane Sandy. And the Bah family’s attorneys say the shot that struck Bah’s head came at a downward trajectory, which they say would be inconsistent to the officers’ claim that he was standing over them with a knife.

The information came to light after Hawa Bah sued the city, saying that the police version of the shooting was, at best, riddled with inconsistencies and, at worst, a coverup.

I said, ‘Please let me talk to Mohamed, he’ll open the door,’

“It’s clear to us from the inconsistencies in the deposition testimony of these officers that they didn’t have enough time to get their story straight,” said Debra Cohen, a lawyer with the firm Newman Ferrara, who is representing the Bah family.

An NYPD spokesman declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Police declined to provide information about the shooting, including the incident report and the initial press release. Attorneys representing the officers involved in the shooting did not respond to requests for comment.

On the day he died, Mohamed Bah was 28, a student at a Manhattan community college and a local cab driver with no criminal record. His family described him as a loving and compassionate son, who escorted his mother to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty each year to celebrate his ability to immigrate legally.

During Hawa Bah’s visit in 2012, however, something felt off. When she tried to coax her son out of his small apartment, he refused and disappeared, barely dressed, into his bedroom. As he slumped into his bed, his mother went outside and called for help.

She first tried two private ambulance services, but the numbers didn’t work. Then she called 911, struggling to communicate in heavily accented English.

Hawa Bah said her son had mental problems, and the dispatcher promised to send an ambulance as soon as possible. Instead, officers from the NYPD’s specialized tactical unit responded, climbing five flights of stairs to the apartment where Mohamed Bah had barricaded himself.

What happened next is in dispute. Initially, police said Mohamed Bah opened the door and slashed at the officers as they tried to push him back into the apartment. Stun guns failed to subdue Bah, who tried to stab Mateo. That prompted Mateo to yell: “He’s stabbing me! Shoot him!” And the officers opened fire.

More recently, in sworn depositions, the officers gave a slightly different account: Mohamed was carrying a knife when he opened the door. Four officers pushed him back with tactical shields and tried to subdue him.

One officer fired a bean bag. Another tried a stun gun. A third also pulled his stun gun, aiming it over the shoulders of two other officers.

The wire from that gun struck Mateo, who fell to the ground and cried out in pain, Mateo said under questioning by Hawa Bah’s attorney. That prompted Mateo and two other officers to pull out their guns and start shooting.

After I get justice for my son, then I will give you a hug

“Mr. Bah wasn’t stabbing you while you were on the ground, was he?” the attorney asked.

No matter the circumstance, police are rarely charged with a crime for killing someone while on duty. Of more than 800 fatal shootings this year, five officers have faced charges.

In November 2013, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance informed then-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly that a grand jury had declined to issue indictments in the Bah shooting, finding that the officers’ “use of deadly physical force was not unlawful.”

Bah’s story soon disappeared from the headlines, and the city moved on. This year, New York police have shot and killed seven people, according to a Washington Post database, tied with San Diego and Oklahoma City for the fourth highest number of fatal shootings in the nation.

After a spate of protests of police brutality, New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, D, signed an executive order in July requiring a special prosecutor to review all fatal shootings and other deaths at the hands of officers – a move widely praised by activists. But the edict is not retroactive, meaning it will provide no relief for Hawa Bah.

She was there the day Cuomo signed the executive order, invited along with the families of other men who died at the hands of police. While the others wrapped Cuomo in hugs, she offered him only a stiff handshake.

“After I get justice for my son,” she told the governor, “then I will give you a hug.”

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/new-york-police-said-mohamed-bah-was-shot-because-he-stabbed-them-now-they-dont-remember-a-knife/feed1stdCriminal_Justice_Cuomo(Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)U.S. to release 6,000 inmates in one of the largest mass discharges from federal prisons in American historyhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/u-s-to-release-6000-inmates-in-one-of-the-largest-mass-discharges-from-federal-prisons-in-american-history
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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is preparing to release roughly 6,000 inmates from federal prisons starting at the end of this month as part of an effort to ease overcrowding and roll back the harsh penalties given to nonviolent drug dealers in the 1980s and ’90s, according to federal law enforcement officials.

About a third of the inmates are undocumented immigrants who will be deported. Because many of those inmates were convicted of crimes that are significant legal offenses, President Barack Obama is unlikely to be criticized as sharply for their release by those who have objected to past deportation decisions by the administration.

The release will be one the largest discharges of inmates from federal prisons in American history. It coincides with an intensifying bipartisan effort to ease the mass incarcerations that followed decades of tough sentencing for drug offenses, like dealing crack cocaine, and that have taken a particularly harsh toll on minority communities.

“Today’s announcement is nothing short of thrilling because it carries justice,” said Jesselyn McCurdy, a senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Far too many people have lost years of their lives to draconian sentencing laws born of the failed drug war. People of color have had to bear the brunt of these misguided and cruel policies. We are overjoyed that some of the people so wronged will get their freedom back.”

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

While news of the early releases was widely praised, it raised some concerns among law enforcement officials across the country who are grappling with an increase in homicides. Their fear is that many of the freed convicts will be unable to get jobs and will return to crime.

Ronald E. Teachman, who was the police chief in South Bend, Indiana, until last Wednesday, said that what inmates were convicted of and what they actually did were rarely the same.

He said that prisoners who were released after receiving job skills and other assimilation training often succeeded. But, he said, that rarely occurs — even in the federal system.

“People come out of prison hardened and angry and more likely to offend,” said Teachman, now an executive with ShotSpotter, a company that promotes a system for detecting gunfire.

In April 2014, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reduced the penalties for many nonviolent drug crimes. That summer it said those guidelines could be applied retroactively to many prisoners serving long drug sentences. Eric H. Holder Jr., the attorney general at the time, had lobbied the sentencing commission to make the changes.

Under the new guidelines, prisoners can ask federal judges to reassess their sentences. Along with examining the inmates’ behavior in prison, the judges look at whether they are likely to act out violently if they are released.

As part of an effort to give the federal Bureau of Prisons time to prepare for an influx of convicts entering probation and re-entry programs, the releases were delayed. They will now take place from Oct. 30 to Nov. 2.

Today’s announcement is nothing short of thrilling because it carries justice

The United States has a quarter of the world’s prison population, and Republican and Democratic lawmakers agree that prison spending, which accounts for a third of the Justice Department’s budget, needs to be reduced.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators proposed a sweeping overhaul aimed at reducing mandatory minimums and winning early release for those serving sentences disproportionate to their crimes.

The changes would be retroactive if the legislation is enacted, and lawmakers estimated that up to 6,500 other prisoners — many of them charged with offenses related to crack cocaine — could qualify for resentencing under the changes. Given the bipartisan support, the legislation has a stronger chance of being passed than many other bills Congress is considering.

Immigrant advocates have accused the administration of breaking up families by deporting immigrants who did little wrong other than coming to the country illegally. This criticism was fueled by a record number of deportations in Obama’s first term — although that pace has slowed considerably in the last year.

The drug war has devastated families and communities, and it is time for the healing to begin

This summer, Republican candidates for president, particularly Donald Trump, seized on the killing of a woman in San Francisco by a man who had been deported to Mexico several times and was recently freed from a federal prison.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, on Tuesday declined to comment on the release of the prisoners, but expressed optimism that both parties would continue to support criminal justice changes.

“We’re pleased to see that many Republicans consider this to be a priority, too,” Earnest said. “At this point, I don’t think there’s a significant level of concern that any rhetoric on the campaign trail could sabotage the important bipartisan work that’s currently ongoing on Capitol Hill. And I hope I’m right about that.”

Anthony Papa, a spokesman at the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports the relaxation of certain drug sentencing laws, said, “It warms my heart to hear that 6,000 people will be coming home.”

“The drug war has devastated families and communities, and it is time for the healing to begin,” said Papa, who himself spent 12 years behind bars on a mandatory minimum drug sentence.

NEW YORK — Loretta Lynch used to be the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn before her protracted bid to be confirmed as attorney general of the United States. She finally got through her confirmation and returned here triumphantly to announce the arrests of senior FIFA officials in a worldwide corruption scandal that goes to the highest levels of global soccer.

It was a good match. The U.S. Department of Justice is an international behemoth of immense power, its prosecutors largely exempt from the normal rules of justice. So too is FIFA. Neither body is too fussy about the strict requirements of due process or the rule of law.

I have no particular affection for soccer but, like most true fans of the game, seem to share universal disgust with FIFA as the global governing body. That it would be charged with massive corruption in steering the World Cup to some of the world’s less lovely venues and operating the quadrennial tournament to maximise its larcenous appetites strikes most, not as shocking, but merely as an official recognition of a badly kept secret. Yet the question surely arises: why is the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuting a Swiss-based agency over corruption scandals that took place in other countries?

The answer is always the same when it comes to the prosecutorial state: because it can and because there is a political reason to do so. The FIFA indictments followed the usual practice when it comes to financial crime.

First, a bloated bill of charges is worked up, including racketeering and conspiracies of all kinds. Faced with the prospects of decades in prison, the accused does what 97 per cent of all accused do in a country where actual trials are increasingly rare: he cops a plea in exchange for providing evidence against those higher up the food chain. It is advantageous for the administration of justice if such evidence is true, but thinly suborned perjury is also routinely acceptable.

When combined with anti-terrorism laws that expand American justice’s remit anywhere it wishes to go, the Department of Justice — here operating out of the New York attorney’s office — flipped inter alia, Chuck Blazer, a former FIFA executive committee member, who is now singing for his more lenient treatment.

No tears will be shed if FIFA officials receive a less-than-scrupulous ride through the courts. But justice should be just, even for those who everyone believes to be crooks. Furthermore, the marriage of prosecutorial power to politically potent cases is an additional cause for worry.

To use an example closer to home, last month Sandro Lisi was acquitted on drug-related charges in Toronto. The judge in the case, Ramez Khawly, chastised the prosecutors for proceeding with such thin evidence as he dismissed all charges. Justice may be blind, but the judge wasn’t and he noted that the massive police and prosecutorial resources devoted to Lisi were completely disproportionate to his alleged criminality.

The purpose of the investigation was to take down then-Mayor Rob Ford. Ford was never charged, but the sensational details in Lisi’s case created a political inferno. Then-police chief Bill Blair, now a Liberal candidate for Parliament, authorized an investigation so broad that it looked to the judge like something suspiciously close to police surveillance of a political rival. Justice is not served when police resources are used for political purposes.

Politically advantageous prosecutions can of course overlap with good police work, yet when the Brooklyn prosecutor rides an international finance scandal to the position of U.S. attorney general, there is reason to be suspicious, even for those determinedly inclined not to give FIFA the benefit of any doubt.

The resignation of FIFA chief Sepp Blatter, only days after forcing his way to re-election, is entirely welcome. The timing of the arrests announced in New York were clearly intended to achieve what eventually transpired in Zurich. It cannot be encouraging for soccer fans, however, that it required an American prosecutor to intervene where FIFA’s own governance failed.

It is also not encouraging for those concerned about the integrity of the criminal justice system. Crusading American prosecutors are not immune from abuses of power. FIFA needs cleaning up to be sure, but it would have been better for soccer, and for justice, if it had been done by soccer’s own governance. Perhaps it is a fitting description of how low FIFA had fallen that it required the American criminal justice system to fix it.

National Post

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/father-raymond-j-de-souza-why-is-the-u-s-prosecuting-fifa-over-corruption-scandals-that-largely-took-place-elsewhere/feed1stdLaw Enforcement Officials Search Offices Of CONCACAF And Soccer Event Company In Miami Over FIFA IndictmentsPoliticians outraged by penalty given to DEA agents for sex parties with prostitutes — 2 to 10 day suspensionshttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/politicians-outraged-by-penalty-given-to-dea-agents-for-sex-parties-with-prostitutes-2-to-10-days-suspension
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WASHINGTON – Lawmakers expressed outrage on Tuesday at the punishments imposed on Drug Enforcement Administration agents who were accused of participating in sex parties with prostitutes while stationed in Colombia.

Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings said in a hearing that the panel had begun an investigation into a report by the Justice Department’s inspector general that detailed allegations of sexual misconduct and the misuse of government funds by 10 DEA agents.

Seven of the agents admitted to participating in the sex parties and those involved received suspensions of two to 10 days.

The report was released last month, but the committee disclosed new information showing that DEA agents in Bogota were taking part in sex parties with prostitutes as early as 2001 — years earlier than previously known.

“This new internal report describes not one or two isolated incidents, but literally dozens of parties with prostitutes,” Cummings said at the hearing, adding the report portrayed “a DEA agency as completely out of control.”

During the hearing, lawmakers asked Michele Leonhart, the DEA administrator, why the offences had not merited harsher penalties.

“When we have bad apples who repeatedly do the same type of behaviour, compromise our national security, then they need to lose their national security clearances and they need to be fired,” said committe chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah.

Related

Leonhart told the committee that she did not have the power to fire agents or revoke their security clearances.

“I don’t believe that the discipline doled out in those cases is even close to what it should be,” she said in testimony before the committee.

Under U.S. civil service rules, Leonhart said, she could not fire, revoke security clearances or recommend penalties for the agents. Two senior officials in the agency were tasked with discipline, she said.

“Honestly, what power do you have?” asked Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C. “You have to work with agents over whom you can’t discipline and have no control. What the hell do you get to do?”

Joaquin Sarmiento for The New York TimesProstitutes walk the street in Colombia.

The Justice Department reviewed allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment within its law enforcement branches: the DEA; the FBI; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the Marshals Service – and found “some significant systemic issues” in all four.

The report described accusations from foreign police officers that DEA agents had attended “loud” parties with prostitutes over several years, paid for by local drug cartels. The parties reportedly took place in locations leased by the government where agents’ laptops and other electronic devices were present. The foreign officers also said they had watched over the agents’ weapons and other property during the parties.

Three agents were also accused of receiving money, expensive gifts and weapons from drug cartel members, the report said.

On one occasion, an assistant regional director reportedly solicited prostitutes for a farewell party in his honour, an allegation he denied during an investigation by the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility; he was not disciplined because of a lack of evidence, the investigation found. The party and the prostitutes were said to have been paid for using government money.

Cadena SERThis Friday, May 4, 2012 frame grab taken from the Spanish radio station Cadena SER website shows Dania Londono Suarez during an interview at an undisclosed location. Nearly four weeks after the Secret Service prostitution scandal erupted, U.S. government investigators on Thursday, May 10, 2012, interviewed the Colombia prostitute at the center of the affair, which cost eight officers and supervisors their jobs.

According to the report, local DEA supervisors were aware of these parties because of letters of complaint that they received from building managers. They warned those involved to stop but did not report the allegations to the agency’s headquarters, judging them a local issue.

The report described another case involving a deputy marshal who received only a verbal admonishment for allegedly soliciting prostitutes in Thailand.

Accusations of sexual harassment, including against a DEA official who was said to have used vulgar language and to have asked an assistant to watch pornographic movies, were also described.

In response to the report, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. issued a memo on Friday reminding employees of the department’s firm stance against soliciting prostitutes, even in countries where it is legal.

“I want to reiterate to all department personnel, including attorneys and law enforcement officers, that they are prohibited from soliciting, procuring or accepting commercial sex,” he wrote.

The Justice Department report came after a separate prostitution scandal involving the Secret Service in 2012, which moved Congress to call for a closer look at officials stationed overseas.

MANUEL PEDRAZA / AFP / Getty ImagesView of the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia on April 19, 2012, where US Secret Service agents would have taken hired prostitutes.

A new Justice Department investigation revealed a series of shocking allegations of sexual misconduct by agency employees on Thursday.

These allegations include “sex parties” funded by drug cartels, outlandish and fetishistic sex while on the job, extreme acts of sexual harassment against female subordinates, and much more.

The accusations are the result of an inspector general’s investigation into the sexual harassment and misconduct policies of four Justice Department law-enforcement agencies: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), US Marshals Service, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Business Insider rounded up some of the wildest allegations from the report below. These incidents were cited in the report because they were not properly handled by the respective agencies. Many of the offenders were allowed to continue their offensive behavior even after it was reported.

Sex with a fugitive’s wife?
According to the report, a US marshall supervisor learned that a deputy had an “inappropriate” and “romantic” relationship with the spouse of a fugitive. Even after three supervisors instructed the deputy marshall to end the relationship, he nevertheless “continued to pursue it” for another year.

The Office of Professional Responsibility apparently only found out about the relationship after it was terminated: “When the relationship ended, the fugitive’s spouse lodged a complaint.”

NICOLAS ASFOURI / AFP / Getty ImagesThai army chief General Prayut Chan-O-Cha makes a speech on television as workers wait for customers in a red light district in Bangkok on May 30, 2014.

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‘Sex with anonymous partners’ on the job
In one particularly bizarre 2009 account, an ATF director apparently went through great lengths to facilitate sexual encounters while on assignment. According to the report, he “solicited consensual sex with anonymous partners and modified a hotel room door to facilitate sexual play.”

In addition, the director “removed smoke detectors from the hotel room and inadvertently caused damage to the hotel’s centralized fire detection system.” After being confronted, he admitted it “was not an isolated incident for him and had occurred in the past.”

It appears the ATF director was likely Russell Vanderwerf, who held the same title and was reportedly involved in a similar incident at the time identified in the inspector general’s report. Here’s how the New Orleans The Times-Picayune described his hotel room modifications:

But the staffers and a deputy sheriff also discovered that someone had removed the bedroom door from its hinges and replaced it with a 5-by-4-foot piece of plywood affixed to the frame and the drywall with hinges and screws, the arrest report said. The door had two locks attached from the bedroom side and a circular hole padded with duct tape. The deputy noted in the arrest report that the hole appeared to be used “in some sort of sexual act.”

Cadena SERThis Friday, May 4, 2012 frame grab taken from the Spanish radio station Cadena SER website shows Dania Londono Suarez during an interview at an undisclosed location. Nearly four weeks after the Secret Service prostitution scandal erupted, U.S. government investigators on Thursday, May 10, 2012, interviewed the Colombia prostitute at the center of the affair, which cost eight officers and supervisors their jobs.

‘Sex parties’ funded by drug cartels

In one of the most headline-grabbing allegations in the report, Drug Enforcement Agency employees admitted to attending “sex parties” in Colombia with prostitutes paid by drug cartels. What’s more, these allegedly “loud” parties happened on government property, creating “security risks.”

“In particular, the Inspector said that she explained to [Office of Professional Responsibility] management that the fact that most of the ‘sex parties’ occurred in government-leased quarters where agents’ laptops, BlackBerry devices, and other government-issued equipment were present [and] created potential security risks for the DEA and for the agents who participated in the parties, potentially exposing them to extortion, blackmail, or coercion,” the report said.

The prostitute receptionist
A deputy US marshall conducting an extradition in Bangkok, Thailand, allegedly got involved with some local prostitutes. The situation got a little weird when they started talking to the federal government on his behalf.

Each time the State Department called the marshall, “two women with heavy foreign accents answered the phone and stated the [marshall] could not be disturbed. A local investigator for the State Department spoke to one of the women in Thai [and] confirmed she was a prostitute.”

The ATF love triangle
An ATF supervisor failed to report his or her “inappropriate relationship” with an assistant, which involved an “intentional misuse of government vehicles to facilitate that relationship.” The supervisor was married and his or her spouse, who was also an ATF employee, found out about the romantic entanglement and “insisted” it be reported to management.

An overseas porn ask
A DEA assistant regional director allegedly made “numerous inappropriate sexual comments” to his assistant while stationed in another country, including a request “to watch pornographic movies” together. The person also “routinely threw items, yelled at employees, and used other vulgarities in the office and at official functions, among other allegations.”

‘Tightening his pants’
An FBI supervisor “repeated unprofessional behavior, including cornering his subordinates in their cubicles and displaying the size of his genitals by tightening his pants, making graphic and inappropriate sexual comments and gestures, and otherwise creating a hostile work environment.”

Instead of reporting his behavior, however, the supervisor was repeatedly told to cut it out. “Accordingly, the subordinates experienced the [supervisor’s] misconduct for approximately 3 years before it was reported to headquarters,” the report said.

Brown FamilyThis undated photo shows Michael Brown, 18, who was shot and killed in a confrontation with police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Mo., on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department won’t prosecute a former Ferguson, Missouri, police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black 18-year-old, but in a scathing report released Wednesday faulted the city and its law enforcement for racial bias.

Federal officials concluded there was no evidence to disprove former officer Darren Wilson’s testimony that he feared for his safety, nor was there reliable evidence that Michael Brown had his hands up when he was shot.

The decision in the August 9 shooting had been expected, in part because of the high legal standard needed for a federal civil rights prosecution.

Wilson, who has said Brown struck him in the face and reached for his gun during a tussle, also had been cleared by a Missouri grand jury in November and later resigned from the department.

The report said blacks in Ferguson are disproportionately subject to excessive police force, baseless traffic stops and citations for infractions as petty as walking down the middle of the street.

Attention now turns to Ferguson as the city confronts how to fix racial biases that the federal government says are deeply rooted in the police department, court and jail.

Similar federal investigations of troubled police departments have led to the appointment of independent monitors and mandated overhauls in the most fundamental of police practices. The Justice Department maintains the right to sue a police department if officials balk at making changes, though many investigations resolve the issue with both sides negotiating a blueprint for change known as a consent decree.

“It’s quite evident that change is coming down the pike. This is encouraging,” said John Gaskin III, a St. Louis community activist. “It’s so unfortunate that Michael Brown had to be killed. But in spite of that, I feel justice is coming.”

Others said the federal government’s findings confirmed what they had long known and should lead to change in the police department leadership.

Brown’s killing set off weeks of protests and initiated a national dialogue about police use of force and their relations with minority communities.

The findings of the investigation, which began weeks after Brown’s killing last August, were released as Attorney General Eric Holder prepares to leave his job following a six-year tenure that focused largely on civil rights. The report is based on interviews with police leaders and residents, a review of more than 35,000 pages of police records and analysis of data on stops, searches and arrests.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently issued new guidelines to prevent local and state police from using federal law to seize private property without a warrant or proof of a crime. But it’s a little early to be celebrating the end of civil forfeiture abuse.

Most U.S. states have their own civil forfeiture statutes, as do seven Canadian provinces, which means that in most of North America, police are still free to take people’s property — their homes, their cars, their cash — without even charging them with a crime, let alone proving one beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

It is difficult to think of a better example of how little will change thanks to the DOJ’s guidelines than a Virginia bust and seizure reported on recently by The Washington Post.

A high stakes game of poker was taking place in the basement of a private home in a well-to-do suburb of Washington, D.C., when a SWAT team dressed in black and armed with assault rifles charged in and seized tens of thousands of dollars from the shocked players. Illegal gambling, you see. The players, who were unarmed and understandably alarmed by the sudden appearance of officers pointing semi-automatic weapons at their faces and yelling at them not to move, co-operated fully.

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While several of the players were charged, they eventually agreed to the deal that prosecutors offered them. It involved the expunging of the illegal gambling charges, so long as the players kept a clean record for six months.

The only small catch was that police would keep 40% of the cash they seized, though they would not comment on how the money would be spent. If the situation in Virginia is anything like the one in Ontario, chances are that the cash will be put back into the police department, in the form of nifty new departmental equipment and toys, such as ATVs, GPS tracking devices and surveillance cameras.

Ontario has also chosen to use some of the money it has acquired through civil forfeiture on what it described in a response to a freedom of information request as, “binoculars used to monitor & identify vandals in action.” For some reason, this amuses me as much as it depresses me.

The problem, of course, is not with ATVs or cameras or binoculars in and of themselves, but with the dangerous incentives that are created when the same people who are charged with seizing private property — the police — stand to benefit from the value of whatever they acquire.

We have so far not seen quite as brazen and unrelenting civil forfeiture abuses in Canada as have been typical in the United States. But it’s hard to escape the feeling that things are getting worse here, even as Americans are very slowly starting to demand that civil forfeiture powers be reined in. In Ontario, an Orillia couple named the Reillys stand to lose the two boarding houses they own even though they are not charged with any crime.

In fact, they haven’t even had their trial yet, but the judge has already ordered that their properties be sold. It’s almost as though the Reillys are being punished for their good deeds: They tried to provide housing for the disadvantaged and often drove their tenants, many of whom suffered from addictions, to detox centres or self-help meetings. Now Ontario says that because some tenants apparently used and/or sold illegal drugs in the building, the rent the Reillys received was “proceeds of crime.” Ergo, the property must be handed over to the attorney general to be sold for cash.

There is hope when the anger at the injustices caused by civil forfeiture is so widespread that the U.S. DOJ feels it must act. But there is still a long way to go when harmless poker players and tender-hearted landlords are targeted not for what they’ve done, but for what they have.

National Post
msoupcoff@theccf.ca

Marni Soupcoff is executive director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation (theccf.ca).

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department launched a broad investigation Thursday into the police department in Ferguson, Missouri, following the shooting last month of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer.

The investigation, which goes beyond an existing federal probe into the Aug. 9 shooting, will look for patterns of discrimination within the predominantly white department and focus on how officers use force, search and arrest suspects, and treat inmates at the city jail. The police department said it welcomed the investigation.

In announcing the action, Attorney General Eric Holder, who visited the St. Louis suburb two weeks ago, said he and his department had heard numerous concerns from people there about police practices, a history of “deep mistrust” of law enforcement and a lack of diversity on the police force.

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The inquiry is part of a broader Justice Department effort to investigate troubled police departments and, when pervasive problems are found, institute changes. The department says it has investigated more than 20 police departments in the past five years, more than twice the number of cases opened in the previous five years.

Besides the investigation into the Ferguson police force, the Justice Department says it will also work with the St. Louis County police department, which trains officers from Ferguson and other local departments, to review the use of force, the handling of mass demonstrations and other aspects of policing. It will also conduct a report on the county’s response to the two weeks of sometimes violent demonstrations that followed the shooting.

AP Photo/Jeff RobersonA member of the St. Louis County Police Department points his weapon in the direction of a group of protesters in Ferguson, Mo. on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014.

Police have said the shooting came after a scuffle that broke out after Wilson told Brown and a friend to move out of the street and onto a sidewalk. Police say Wilson was pushed into his squad car and physically assaulted. Some witnesses have reported seeing Brown’s arms in the air before the shooting in an act of surrender. An autopsy paid for by Brown’s family concluded that he was shot six times, twice in the head.

The FBI is conducting a civil rights investigation into the shooting and a local grand jury is also evaluating the case.

The investigation announced Thursday will focus on a police department that is predominantly white, even though Ferguson is about 70 percent black. Some in Ferguson have said police disproportionately target black motorists during traffic stops, something Holder said particularly concerned him.

A 2013 report by the Missouri attorney general’s office found that Ferguson police stopped and arrested black drivers nearly twice as often as white motorists but were also less likely to find contraband among the black drivers.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., called the investigation “a step in the right direction.” Civil rights advocates championed the move, too, but said more needs to be done.

AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, FileIn this Aug. 17, 2014 file photo, a law enforcement officer watches from an armoured vehicle after a device was fired to disperse a crowd during a protest for Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo.

“On a national level, we will remain steadfast in our commitment to eliminate police brutality everywhere and ensure the rights of those most impacted by these practices are protected in their entirety,” said Tef Poe, a St. Louis artist and organizer with the group HandsUpUnited.

“This is an important step,” Poe said. “However, we know much more needs to be done in order to bring the officer who killed Mike Brown to justice and address the epidemic of deadly police violence across the country.”

The Justice Department’s civil rights division routinely investigates individual police departments when there are allegations of systemic use-of-force violations, racial bias or other problems. The department says it is currently enforcing 14 agreements to overhaul police department practices.

The investigations typically encourage significant changes to policies and practices and often end with settlements known as consent decrees in which the department agrees to make specified reforms.

“They will comb records of citizens’ complaints, they will look at the filing of lawsuits, they will look at all of the record-keeping in the police department,” said David Harris, a police practices expert at the University of Pittsburgh law school.

The Justice Department reached a court-supervised agreement in 2012 with the New Orleans Police Department that would require the agency to overhaul its policies and procedures for use of force, training, interrogations, searches and arrests, recruitment and supervision.

In April, it issued a harshly critical report of the police department in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that faulted the agency for a pattern of excessive force and called for an overhaul of its internal affairs unit. The city and the Justice Department have been locked in negotiations over ordered changes.

MIAMI — Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Donna Jane Watts was on routine patrol early one morning when a Miami police car whizzed past at speeds that would eventually top 190 km/h. Even with her blue lights flashing and siren blaring, it took Watts more than seven minutes to pull the speeder over.

Not certain who was behind the wheel, she approached the car warily, with gun drawn, according to video from her cruiser’s dashboard camera. “Put your hands out of the window! Right now!” she yelled. It turned out the driver was Miami Police Department officer Fausto Lopez, in full uniform. Watts holstered her gun but still handcuffed him and took his weapon.

“I apologize,” Lopez said, explaining that he was late for an off-duty job.

That October 2011 confrontation made national headlines and eventually got Lopez fired. But Watts’ actions involving a fellow officer didn’t sit well with many in law enforcement, and not long after she made that traffic stop, she says, the harassment began. Random telephone calls on her cell phone. Some were threats and some were prank calls, including orders for pizza. Unfamiliar vehicles and police cars sat idling in her cul-de-sac. She was afraid to open her mailbox.

Watts suspected her private driver’s licence information was being accessed by fellow officers, so she made a public records request with the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. It turned out she was right: over a three-month period, at least 88 law enforcement officers from 25 different agencies accessed Watts’ driver’s licence information more than 200 times, according to her lawyer.

Law enforcement officers have long been known to band together and protect each other, but Watts said in her lawsuit that these actions went too far.

Watts is suing those police agencies and the individual officers under the federal Driver Privacy Protection Act, a 1994 law that provides for a penalty of US$2,500 for each violation if the information was improperly accessed. Watts’ attorney, Mirta Desir, said it’s clear most of the officers had no legitimate reason to look up her data. If all the searches were found illegal, Watts could receive more than US$500,000.

“Ultimately what it comes down to is a violation of privacy,” Desir said. “It wasn’t for any legitimate purpose on the part of the police officers and it was done by people in a position of trust.”

According to court documents, most of the individual officers named in Watts’ lawsuit did face some disciplinary action, usually a written reprimand. But lawyers for the agencies have asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming that under the U.S. Constitution, Congress cannot hold police officers liable for merely accessing the information, but only if they try to sell it. And some claim they did have a legitimate reason.

For example, a lawyer for fellow state Trooper Andrew Cobb said in court papers that he accessed Watts’ information after “hearing rumours that other troopers were threatening” her and that his actions were done “out of concern for a fellow trooper” and as “a matter of public safety.” Under Highway Patrol policy, employees typically are not permitted to comment on legal matters.

The challenge by some Florida police agencies to the driver’s licence law has drawn the attention of the U.S. Justice Department, which is defending its constitutionality. In its own court November filing, the Justice Department insists that numerous courts have held that Congress can regulate such activity even if the items involved aren’t being sold.

“There is value in drivers’ information and a market for it,” the Justice Department lawyers said. “What the defendants fail to recognize is that there is value in drivers’ information whether or not it is actually sold.”

The legal clash over Watts’ lawsuit comes as some police agencies are seeking changes in the driver’s licence law itself. Bill Johnson, executive director of the National Association of Police Agencies, said law enforcement officials are concerned that lawyers are using the law to target individual officers who access the information. He noted that the US$2,500 penalty per violation can add up quickly.

“In our view, it was not what the federal law was enacted to counteract,” Johnson said. “I think it would be unfair and outside the scope of the legislation to think individuals would get whacked like that.”

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NAPO is lobbying Congress to remove the automatic US$2,500 penalty and change the law so that a violation could only occur if there was “specific intent to secure an economic benefit,” according to the organization’s documents.

Desir, the attorney representing Watts, said anyone can ask the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles for a report — known as D.A.V.I.D., for Driving and Vehicle Information Database — on who has accessed their driver’s licence information and how many times. But it isn’t easy.

“You don’t even know you’ve been looked up unless you make a concerted effort to find out,” she said.

A judge is expected to rule on the law enforcement agency and officers’ motions to dismiss in the coming weeks, which will determine whether the lawsuit continues. Desir said Watts, who had been assigned to road patrol in Broward County, has relocated and is no longer driving a cruiser, although she still works for the Highway Patrol. Through Desir, Watts declined to be interviewed.

WASHINGTON — In an assertion of same-sex marriage rights, Attorney General Eric Holder is applying a landmark Supreme Court ruling to the Justice Department, announcing Saturday that same-sex spouses cannot be compelled to testify against each other, should be eligible to file for bankruptcy jointly and are entitled to the same rights and privileges as federal prison inmates in opposite-sex marriages.

The Justice Department runs a number of benefits programs, and Holder says same-sex couples will qualify for them. They include the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund and benefits to surviving spouses of public safety officers who suffer catastrophic or fatal injuries in the line of duty.

“In every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States, they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Holder said in prepared remarks to the Human Rights Campaign in New York. The advocacy group works on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights.

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Just as in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, the stakes in the current generation over same-sex marriage rights “could not be higher,” said Holder.

“The Justice Department’s role in confronting discrimination must be as aggressive today as it was in Robert Kennedy’s time,” Holder said of the attorney general who played a leadership role in advancing civil rights.

On Monday, the Justice Department will issue a policy memo to its employees instructing them to give lawful same-sex marriages full and equal recognition, to the greatest extent possible under the law.

Holder’s address is the latest application of a Supreme Court ruling that struck down a provision in the Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The decision applies to legally married same-sex couples seeking federal benefits.

After the Supreme Court decision last June, the Treasury Department and the IRS said that all legally married gay couples may file joint federal tax returns, even if they reside in states that do not recognize same-sex marriages. The Defense Department said it would grant military spousal benefits to same-sex couples. The Health and Human Services Department said the Defense of Marriage Act is no longer a bar to states recognizing same-sex marriages under state Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management said it is now able to extend benefits to legally married same-sex spouses of federal employees and annuitants.

Holder told his audience:

The Justice Department will recognize that same-sex spouses of individuals involved in civil and criminal cases should have the same legal rights as all other married couples, including the right to decline to give testimony that might violate the marital privilege. Under this policy, even in states where same-sex marriages are not recognized, the federal government will not use state views as a basis to object to someone in a same-sex marriage from invoking this right.

The U.S. Trustee Program will take the position that same-sex married couples should be eligible to file for bankruptcy jointly and that domestic support obligations should include debts such as alimony owed to a former same-sex spouse.

Federal prisoners in same-sex marriages will be entitled to visitation by a spouse, inmate furloughs during a crisis involving a spouse, escorted trips to attend a spouse’s funeral, correspondence with a spouse and compassionate release or reduction in sentence based on an inmate’s spouse being incapacitated.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/u-s-justice-department-applies-landmark-same-sex-ruling-to-itself-with-expanded-benefits-programs/feed2stdFILE: U.S. Government To Expand Recognition of Same-sex MarriagesU.S. student who drank own urine after he was forgotten in jail cell for four days awarded $4.1Mhttp://news.nationalpost.com/news/u-s-college-student-who-drank-own-urine-to-survive-four-days-in-jail-cell-awarded-4-1-million
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SAN DIEGO — A 25-year old college student reached a $4.1 million settlement with the U.S. government after he was abandoned in a windowless cell for more than four days without food or water, his attorneys said Tuesday.

Daniel Chong said he drank his own urine to stay alive, hallucinated that agents were trying to poison him with gases through the vents, and tried to carve a farewell message to his mother in his arm.

It remained unclear how the situation occurred, and no one has been disciplined, said Eugene Iredale, an attorney for Chong, The Justice Department’s inspector general is investigating.

“It sounded like it was an accident — a really, really bad, horrible accident,” Chong said.

All I wanted was my sanity

Chong was taken into custody during a drug raid and placed in the cell in April 2012 by a police officer authorized to perform Drug Enforcement Administration work. The officer told Chong he would not be charged and said, “’Hang tight, we’ll come get you in a minute,”’ Iredale said.

Justice Department spokeswoman Allison Price confirmed the settlement was reached for $4.1 million but declined to answer other questions. The DEA didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chong said he planned to save and buy his parents a house.

Chong was a 23-year-old engineering student when he was at a friend’s house where the DEA found 18,000 ecstasy pills, other drugs and weapons. Iredale acknowledged Chong was there to consume marijuana.

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Chong and eight other people were taken into custody, but authorities decided against pursuing charges against him after questioning.

Chong said he began to hallucinate on the third day in the cell. He urinated on a metal bench so he could have something to drink. He stacked a blanket, his pants and shoes on a bench and tried to reach an overhead fire sprinkler, trying with his cuffed hands to set it off.

Chong said he accepted the possibility of death. He bit into his eyeglasses to break them and used a shard of glass to try to carve “Sorry Mom” onto his arm so he could leave something for her. He only managed to finish an “S.”

It sounded like it was an accident — a really, really bad, horrible accident

Chong said he slid a shoelace under the door and screamed to get attention before five or six people found him covered in his feces in the cell.

“All I wanted was my sanity,” Chong said. “I wasn’t making any sense.”

Chong was hospitalized for five days for dehydration, kidney failure, cramps and a perforated esophagus. He lost 15 pounds.

The DEA issued a rare public apology at the time.

The DEA introduced national detention standards as a result of the ordeal involving Daniel Chong, including daily inspections and a requirement for cameras in cells, said Julia Yoo, one of his lawyers.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking Republican, on Tuesday renewed his call for the DEA to explain the incident.

“How did this incident happen? Has there been any disciplinary action against the responsible employees? And has the agency taken major steps to prevent an incident like this from happening again?” he said.